BlizzPro sat down to interview Heroes of the Storm developers John DeShazer and Tony Hsu. Highlights included the release plan for Hanzo and Alexstrasza, as well as discussion of game updates and future plans.

Highlights

Hanzo will launch by the end of the year.

His skillshot builds up over time and can be cast while moving.

When Scattershot strikes the terrain, it shatters his single missile into five doing full damage.

Alexstrasza will launch soon after BlizzCon.

Heals her allies by granting them her own HP through Gift of Life.

Can transform into an immense dragon form–the first hero able to do so.

Her fire breath in dragon form damages her enemies and heals her allies.

Considerations from developing Chromie were brought forward to her dragon form. Constraining her wingspan and turning animations allow a large model onto a battleground.

Abundance allows her to heal herself after giving away her own life essence to allies.

Works as a powerful solo-healer that might shake up the meta.

Performance-based matchmaking

Focus is on playing as best as you can.

If you lose a match but personally performed well, you will lose relatively few overall points, or still possibly gain some.

Since the game is so varied, there is no single “right” way to play a character, meaning your performance metrics will reward you for focusing on helping your team win.

Performance-based matchmaking will be built into the existing system, affecting things like queue times, and will work seamlessly in the existing system.

Unsure if old game performance and MMR will factor into new matchmaking system.

Laning updates

Focus to make early lane combat more impactful.

Pushed back map events a bit–first map event will now start an extra sixty seconds later.